As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Electronic messaging, such as email and text messaging, is becoming increasingly popular in both the personal and business communities. For instance, email has become the predominant business tool for communication within and between organizations. With this predominance comes the usage of email as a repository of information, including sensitive or personal information. Such sensitive information has the potential for being misused and/or viewed and may increase the difficulty of maintaining corporate data security and compliance.
Unfortunately, many violations to corporate policies with respect to email go undetected since security actions in such environments are often not audited. For instance, Microsoft Exchange Server™ is a commonly-used enterprise-class messaging platform that provides for collaboration and interaction by routing emails or other communications between senders and recipients and storing the communications for later retrieval. Detailed security-based auditing, however, is not available through native Exchange mechanisms.
To address these and similar problems, some prior schemes provide for monitoring a directory service at an administrator level. Such solutions often include, e.g., reporting changes to mailbox permissions at the domain or administrator level. A major drawback of these schemes is that such high-level monitoring and reporting does not present a user with a comprehensive picture of what is occurring in the messaging environment and does not provide detailed information necessary for prompt and particularized corrective action. For instance, some solutions do not monitor access performed by administrators or others with super or privileged access rights.